No honor in horse slaughter or drug documentation system it uses

For those who eat horse meat, you will never really know how safe, or how toxic, it is.

The reason is that the documentation containing a horse’s medical history demanded by slaughterhouses is so easily forged. In some cases, it is allegedly absent altogether.

A whistle blower pointed out that a slaughter horse without the necessary paperwork can be given the documentation of another slaughter horse who was killed during transport, or died in a feedlot. This is just one example. They are all very easy to do.

Why do slaughterhouses require a horse’s medical history before killing him for his meat, particularly for human consumption? The answer is because of the laundry list of drugs a horse may be administered through his lifetime that can make his meat lethal for humans to consume.

Documentation systems, such as the Equine Information Document required by EU-regulated abattoirs in Canada and Mexico, or the passport system relied on in Europe and the United Kingdom, are conducted on the honor system almost exclusively by kill buyers, the middlemen who acquire the horses. Who monitors this? You could ask the same concerning the agents and officers charged to enforce their government’s regulations in these matters. Are they left to operate on the honor system too? It would appear so.

As we have seen demonstrated time and time again, there is no honor in slaughter.

One glaring case in point is the alarm last year by Canadian slaughter plants who decided to reject trailer loads of U.S. racehorses ostensibly because of the amount of banned drugs they are given. Yet at the same time Canadian slaughter plants blithely accepted their own racehorses who were likely given, at the very least, two of the most common drugs that bars their meat from entering the human food chain, namely phenylbutazone (bute) and clenbuterol (clen).

Because of the latest horse meat scandal, toxic horse meat is back in the news.

In 2012 Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] withdrew funding from, and thereby forced the closure of, the National Equine Database, which held the passport details of every horse in the United Kingdom. A horse’s passport contains details of all drugs ever administered to that horse, some of which could leave the horse flesh unfit for human consumption. But the loss of the database has meant that it could now be possible for a horse to have two passports –- one with the correct details of its medical history, and one which appears to be ‘clean’ when the horse is ready to be slaughtered.

Ireland has the same problem. In May 2012 the Sunday Times reported that Irish horses with forged passports were stopped en route to an English abattoir, with the article stating that ‘hundreds [of horses] are being sold to abattoirs using forged passports’.

Wherever horses are bred, there are tons and tons of horses slaughtered or exported for slaughter for human consumption, which means there are tons and tons of potentially toxic horse meat imported, exported and eaten.

For anyone who thinks that any sort of documentation program will stop or even slow down the slaughter of horses for human consumption, we are sorry to dash your hopes. No government authority, no matter what country, is serious about the issue of toxic horse meat — they only make empty policies that make them seem to be. If any decision maker were truly serious about this issue, they would ban the horse meat trade altogether. There is only one surefire way to end it, and that is for people to stop eating horses.

I went to the article to read the comments. I never saw such a disinterested and out of touch group of people. A few comments made sense but the majority didn’t know a thing about the drugs that could have been in the meat or care. It’s the same nonsense you find in horse slaughter articles you find in the newspapers here what few there are.

Twittering & sharing. Every farmer i talk to is angry about the hoops they have to jump through to get their produce to market. They do not understand why there are no controls with the horse slaughter industry. How would you control it? IMPOSSIBLE! No body seems to remember what BSC did to farmers & how dangerous toxic meat can be.

Lets get a life here, already! HORSES are Pets, ect and are NOT raised to be in the food-chain.
Wonder who ate poor Silky Shark, besides many many others? (Dear god!) Silky Shark was a beautiful animal and a successful race horse. Over the course of his career he earned over $100,000 for his Kentucky owner.
But Silky Shark ended up as meat on someone’s plate – most probably somewhere in Europe. What a shame!
AND, lets not forget the overbreeding of equines, when theres already a crucial lack of homes…

– “Unwanted” is often a word loosely used by “irresponsible breeders” and big business.

They stopped putting horsemeat in dog and cat food— wonder why— but now they think its good for humans when it says right on the horse medicine package not for human consumption, what is wrong with this picture!!!

The entire horse slaughter industry is predicated on forgery and fraud. Who is the EU/EC kidding? I would say that 99% of the meat they import is laced with drugs not permitted in the human food chain, whether they be from NA or elsewhere. One only has to look at the countries that export meat to the EU – most, if not all, do not raise horses for food.

Think About It

"Throughout history, whenever there’s been any kind of social movement, it’s because people have been prepared to fight for what they believe in. There are a lot of people standing up for animals right now and they need to, because they need our help.” — Elio Celotto

"Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error". — Benjamin Rush

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